Camera Obscura

Claudine Doury’s bio tells us that she lives and works in Paris, but it would be more accurate to say that she lives and dreams there. As for work, it happens in the faraway places where her dreams, instincts, and friendships take her (aided and abetted by magazine assignments, grants, and awards). The places are often exoticCrimea, Siberia, Tahiti, Central Asiabut the photos are not, because Doury is a traveler rather than a tourist, a repeated visitor rather than a reporter pressed for time. Russia is a long-standing passion: She learned the language in high school, and her decision

On the occasion of his exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, French artist Mathieu Mercier has reinvested in a concept one might have thought long since worn out by critics and art historians: postmodernism. The works brought together for his first large-scale retrospective, “Sans Titres 1993–2007” (Untitled Works 1993–2007), function essentially according to postmodern principles of anachronism and stylistic miscegenation, and the exhibition itself, laid out by the artist, follows a varied itinerary that produces often dubious or brutal juxtapositions. For example, Mercier